Fear
by stolen-whispers
Summary: An explanation in boggarts. This is all I have right now, but I'd be happy to write more if you want. Just let me know what characters you would like to see next.
1. Chapter 1

The first time Remus Lupin saw his boggart wasn't until after he was bitten. He can't remember what it would have been before and he's not sure it matters. Other days he is absolutely sure it does. He thought it had to be the full moon, because when you're a werewolf that's what happens. You have to do werewolf things, you are afraid of werewolf fears, you live by werewolf rules.

The Defense professor wasn't supposed to let him see a boggart. It was all too common for shape-shifting monsters to turn into full moons in the face of werewolves. Some people considered it a sign. Some people considered it an omen. Some people just screamed.

Later, he'll remember this when he stands in front of Harry. It was less, however, for the class of 13 year olds who shouldn't ever see Lord Voldemort than you would think. Part of it was for him.

Anyway, it was the end of class and no one saw the pale white orb suspended in the air except for the only other second year in the room – watching carefully with his cool grey eyes.

The second time Remus Lupin sees his boggart, it is during his seventh year, before they changed from _JamesSiriusRemusPeter_ to _JamesandLily and SiriusRemusPeter. _He had friends who loved him, and alcohol that makes it okay to say it and maybe, just maybe, he was finally comfortable, finally happy. On their way to the kitchens however, they run into Peeves, who runs into a broom closet door. When the door popped loose, a boggart came sliding out onto the floor, the pale lifeless bodies of Sirius and James and Peter are tangled in brooms and mops. Remus had been a little ways ahead of them, walking backwards as he told some story, so it was obvious to everyone whose worst fear was the dead bodies of his friends.

(You can't be afraid of what's impossible but four years later he knows there is something worse than their deaths.)

No one quite knows what to do or say so they keep going, James vanquishing the boggart before he thinks anyone has caught a glimpse of bright green eyes, empty and cold.

The last time Remus Lupin sees his boggart, it is after his welcome back to Hogwarts prank. It was simple and kind of sad, but he can't help but laugh as he thinks of the expression on his two (three…always three) best friends faces if they could have seen Snape dressed in Agatha Longbottom's clothes. His boggart then is once again a full moon. But it's different this time, in so many painful, utterly heart wrenching ways. It isn't because he's a werewolf, with werewolf fears, and it isn't because he hates his transformations, docile and calm as they are now. It's because the worst has happened and now there is nothing else left.

(He knows this isn't true. There is Harry, who looks so much like his father. There will be Sirius, who will remind him that it wasn't all awful, that they didn't always have to fake their laughter. There will be Nymphadora and Teddy and the bright light of the end of war. But right then, at that moment, there was only him and a James Potter look-a-like he should have known much better.)


	2. Chapter 2

James Potter isn't scared of anything. There's nothing to be scared of when you have everything, when you're invincible and untouchable. This is, of course, why he never tells anyone that his boggart is a giant rat with glowing red eyes and yellow teeth. It has absolutely nothing to do with the burn of shame in his stomach. When Peter's animagus turns out to be a rat, he shudders quietly, and before anyone notices. Anyway, it doesn't matter because he was only nine years old when he saw his boggart and now he's much smarter.

And he's James Potter so he's really not scared of anything.

They are on their way to the kitchens when this changes. Or, rather, when he realizes it has changed. Moony's boggart unnerved him, if not because of the incomprehensible future of death that passed in front of him, than because Remus was immobile and pale and embarrassed and James thought, for even only a split second, that maybe his fears were justified.

But he didn't acknowledge that because he's James Potter and he's not scared of anything.

And so his friends went on ahead and he stayed behind and waited for the giant rat he intended to put in a baby's bonnet (bright pink, with a bow, would look good on Sniv- I mean Snape- I mean, oh yeah, we're not doing that anymore) and instead he was greeted with Lily's corpse.

When Lily returned to the heads' suite that night, it was dark and very late. James had let the fire die down to glowing coals that do nothing to light the room and even less to heat it. He hadn't been able to pull himself off the couch, to blink, to move at all really, since he had flung himself in front of the fire, moody and uncommunicative and alone. But he heard the portrait hole open and Lily curse as she stubbed her toe on the way in. She didn't start when James seemed to come out of nowhere and crush her into his arms, her face pressed into his t-shirt so he could feel her (alive, alive, alive) warm breath.

They are friends now so this is (sort of) okay and anyway she seems to sense his desperation because instead of pulling away, she rests there breathing. When he finally relaxes his hold, she still doesn't move away. Instead, she just rests her hands on his chest and says "It's okay James. I'm alright."

He let her go and she said goodnight, concerned but unwilling to ask and he silently thanks her for that because he can't (ithurts) explain it.

James Potter knows the truth now. When you have everything, you have everything to lose.


	3. Chapter 3

Severus Snape would never, ever, ever tell anyone what his boggart was; not for love, money or anything in between. If you fed him Veritaserum and asked him what his boggart took the shape of, he'd cut his tongue out before answering, or something equally dramatic. He's not even sure he'd tell if that meant he would get Lily. Because Severus Snape's greatest fear is werewolves. It has been since before Hogwarts. Remus Lupin has nothing to do with it.

He liked to think that after he met Lily, after he fell in love with her (because really, those were the same thing, even if his nine year old self didn't know it) that his boggart would have been losing her. But Sirius Black is an asshole (Snape thinks he must have used legilmency on him to find out the secret. That's when he decides no one is ever getting in his head again) and the paralyzing fear that he feels until James Potter grabs him around the waist and drags him to the surface tells him that nope, his greatest fear is definitely still werewolves.

(He never tells anyone that he saw antlers. It's the thank you James Potter never gets.)

He has no time to figure out what this means, however, because days later he calls Lily a mudblood and then she's gone and he's gone and his worst fear is still fucking werewolves.

He doesn't see a boggart for the rest of his life (and that's probably a good thing. Doesn't matter if it was a snarling, evil werewolf, he's going to maul it. The staff, everyone tells him that it was just a harmless joke, but he sees Neville's boggart for what it really was – a prank. It just never fucking ends) so he never knows if it changes, but he suspects not because when you spend so much time around Lord Voldemort and death, pain, humiliation at his hands isn't your greatest fear, what else could be but childhood flights of fancy?

But the moment he realizes his worst fear should have been snakes (long before anyone else realizes, just after Voldemort does) he realizes his boggart would have been intangible this whole time because his worst fear is that he destroyed everything for nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

Lily Evans first boggart wasn't until after she had become Mrs. Lily Potter, but she could track her worst fears up until then pretty well. She's not one of those people that hides her fears like she can ignore them (James won't tell her what his boggart is, but she knows.) or like they are dirty, shameful secrets (Severus won't tell her what his is either, but she couldn't even begin to guess.) She knows knowledge lessens fear and that's why before she was a witch, she learned as much as she could about thunderstorms, and after she was a witch, she learned as much as she could about magic.

(The whole magic thing scared her, the boarding school, the way it explains all those weird things she shouldn't be able to do, the way Sev seemed to think it changed everything and the way Petunia seemed to agree)

She had an awful migraine the day they did boggarts second year and she had the good fortune not to run into one, so all she knew as her worst fear was what made terror curl in her stomach.

(James did and Remus saw and told her the whole story so she can't pretend she was being intuitive that night he gathered in to his arms and whispered unconsciously "don't die" into her hair. When she tells him this he smiles a tight smile and this time he knows he's doing it when he says those words again. And she knows now that she's in love with him.)

And anyway, what happens when you're not scared of magic anymore, when you don't know what your worst fear is? Will a boggart be able to figure it out on its own? She's curious. She thinks she wants to know what it is. But fear isn't something you focus on so instead she focuses on learning and getting ready for war, for marrying James, for having a baby.

(19 is too young to marry, her mom says. Not when you're in a war, watching your friends die every day and knowing you could be next, she wants to snap back. But she doesn't, because there are some things you just don't tell your mother.)

And then she has Harry and she thought she knew what her worst fear was and she tried not to (don't don't don't) think about it, because that would be awful. Then they moved to Godric's Hollow and there was a boggart under the sink and she was home alone. When James came back from playing with Harry in the park, he found Lily huddled on the counter as the boggart switched from Harry to James dead on the floor, over and over again. She was pale (like death) and shaking and it took him 30 seconds to put Harry down and call Sirius to demand a babysitter. The boggart switched to Lily's lifeless body and then it was gone and neither Lily nor James noticed Sirius and Remus showed up and took Harry upstairs.

James pulled Lily off the counter straight into his arms and they tumbled to the floor, her ear pressed against his chest, listening to his heart beat until she was sure it wasn't an illusion. When there was color in her face again, he let her run off to take Harry from Sirius and Remus and they had a nice family dinner when Peter showed up. They laughed too much and too hard and Lily didn't think about the fact that her boggart became James dead first. She didn't know if that was significant but she didn't want to think about it. So she didn't.

Later, when she has to choose, she can't, doesn't, won't, so James chooses for her and she spends her last few minutes on earth hating him for being able to do what she couldn't, for leaving her, for making her love him, for giving her everything to lose.

She supposes that the sacrifice wouldn't have worked nearly as well had she had even the tiniest selfish motivation, but she never had to make the choice. That's what people don't seem to realize. James should get the credit- he made sure it was all she had left.


	5. Chapter 5

Peter Pettigrew's boggart has always been his own dead body. The defense against the dark arts teacher in their second year hadn't let the Marauders face the boggart because they had been giggling and gearing up for it and the woman had felt they weren't taking it seriously enough. This is a good thing, because he's certain his friends' fears wouldn't have been quite so selfish, or stupid.

He knew he had the best friends in the whole world. He knew that they cared about him, that he was one of the group, that they laughed at his jokes and that he was always one of four. They never made him feel like it was three and one. Or two and one and one for that matter. But he thinks about these things and maybe that's what sets him apart. He doesn't see the effortlessness of their relations. He always thinks when he wakes up, today is the day. Today is the day they see that I'm not nearly cool enough.

But that's not his worst fear. His worst fear is dying. And so when the war comes, creeping around the edges of Hogwarts, watching them, waiting for them, his death seems practically unavoidable. And he would really like to avoid it. He doesn't see how they can win and so he is terrified all the time. And he lets his guard down long enough for the death eaters to start making sense. If Lord Voldemort ruled the world, then the likelihood of Peter dying would go down, he thought. There would be nothing to die for.

So the mark gets burned on his arm, and he turns over information that might lead to the deaths of his best friends in the whole world. And while he might not be okay with that (so this is what having a stomach ache all the time would feel like) he's more okay with that than with fear that he might die, which seems to go down as the amount of other deaths go up.

(Less people in the world to cause his death, he reasons. He knows he's being ridiculous. But he's always been good at that. "Peter, stop being ridiculous." But his worst fear was dying, not being alone, and so this makes sense.)

And then Voldemort asks him to do the unthinkable. And by asks, he means tells. Of course, he means orders, compels, demands. And he'd really like to say no. He'd like to be the Potters secret keeper, to keep them safe and for a week he nearly does it. But then Remus nearly dies.

(Remus and Sirius are barely speaking anymore, and neither of them will tell James this, so Peter is the only one who knows. The only one who knows they are being ridiculous. How much he'd like to tell them to stop.)

He's terrified and so he goes to Lord Voldemort and sends his best friends to their destruction. In two seconds, he destroys everything that they had ever loved, everything that they were fighting for. But he was alive. And no longer afraid.

[He should have known better, he thinks, as Harry Potter (sorry, so sorry) and Ron Weasley try to pull his glowing arm away from his neck. But he didn't. And now, in that brief second, he knows his boggart now would be James and Sirius, just looking at him.]


	6. Chapter 6

Sirius Black thinks James Potter is occasionally an idiot. Of course, they are best friends (brothers, and for once he gets to be the younger one) but really, they boy is an idiot. Sirius knows everyone has a fear and he knows that it's a good thing to exploit, to use to get what you want. He doesn't do things like this of course, and even if he had been on that path pre-Hogwarts, James would have intercepted and diverted him. There are lots of things, like how to exploit fears, that he wishes he never learned and it makes falling asleep a lot harder with all those dark things bouncing around inside his head.

He doesn't have to see a boggart to know what his greatest fear is. His boggart would look just like himself, his eyes a little cooler, his posture a little taller, his expression scornful, disdainful. If they could see, Remus would give him a sympathetic smile and say something like "Paradoxical, that your fear means that it can't happen," and James would laugh like it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever seen. This is why it's a good thing the only time he has ever seen his boggart, he was alone. Because they were both wrong and it would have infuriated him.

Peter would have just told Sirius that his boggart was Snape with clean hair because it kills a huge bit of their best material, and that wouldn't infuriate him, but it wouldn't help as much as Peter would like. There would have been too much pretending, because it wasn't a paradox, and it wasn't laughable and he couldn't be distracted from it. He can, could, will, does feel the darkness pushing at him all the time.

So he laughs too loud, talks too much, pranks too often because sometimes he thinks the darkness is talking to him and he wants desperately to drown it out. And James keeps up with him because on some level he gets it and they pull Remus along because they both get Remus's darkness and they pull Peter because Peter's convinced he can't do it by himself. So, while Sirius thinks James is an idiot, he also loves him more than anyone else in the world.

It isn't until after everything falls apart, until he is laughing hysterically about the strategic brilliance of Peter of all people and being dragged off to a place that makes "fate worse than death," seem paltry and trite, that he realizes that James and Remus would have been right because he can't let go, as much as he wants to. He can't let the darkness in. He fights everyday even when he's too tired to think. The Maruaders built him a wall against the darkness and even if Peter took his piece back and hurled it at the wall as hard as he could, it still stands.

When he gets out of Azkaban, he finds he no longer cares what his boggart is. Before he gets Remus and Harry back, he has nothing left to lose. After, well, he always knew he'd die first. He just wishes that James wasn't so bloody perfect, so it could have happened the way it was supposed to.


End file.
